do ethically minded consumers really walk their talk?

 “Sure I always look to buy fair trade/organic/local produce” – a statement we are hearing more and more as sustainable living becomes increasingly mainstream while countries review their green policies and scientists debate the consequences and impacts manmade fossil fuels have. People are also looking at their values when it comes to ethical buying and the changes they can have on the environment.

While working as an advertising strategist, I ran a focus group and conversations shifted to sustainable living. One person remarked how an ad I’d shown them connected with her because of the “sustainability bit”. Almost like a drawn out yawn this idea seemed to spread. Suddenly people who hadn’t observed any ethical or sustainable message were chiming in on how “it connected with how they lived their lives sustainably” and low and behold I was in a room full of greenies. This is a phenomenon commonly known in focus groups as we humans have a sheepish capacity and so it didn’t surprise me, but it did get me wondering, of those that said they lived their lives ‘sustainably’ – how many of them truly did? The reality is that ethically minded consumers do not always walk their talk.

Behavioural psychologists are finding that there’s a distinct gap between what consumers say they are going to do and what they actually do at the point of purchase (Auger and Devinney, 2007; Belk et al., 2005; Carrigan and Attalla, 2001; Follows and Jobber, 2000; Shaw et al., 2007). Empirical studies in the field of consumer behaviour more broadly already suggest that purchase intentions do not translate literally into people’s purchase behaviour. So how do we understand better the process the mind takes when making these purchase decisions in the context of ethical consumption?

Researchers have long understood that intentions are poor predictors of behaviour and that gaining insight into this gap is of critical importance to understanding, interpreting, predicting and influencing consumer behaviour (Bagozzi, 1993).  The idea that “actions speak louder than words” comes to mind. The gap, however, remains poorly understood, especially within the ethical consumerism context and given people tend to respond with answers they believe to be socially acceptable, overstating the importance of ethical considerations in their buying behaviour, the truth of the matter is that what they say is not what they do.  But what is equally interesting is that people do have a concept of what is ‘right or socially acceptable’ yet still behave in a way they themselves might perceive as ‘wrong’.  In the context of human behaviour is this a surprise? Do purchasers of fizzy drinks believe that drinking sugar fuelled fizzy liquids is benefitting them, let alone society?

The majority of ethical consumer behaviour models are built on a core cognitive progression:

Using this framework, there are two circumstances that may contribute to the overall disparity between attitude and behaviour – a gap between consumer attitude and purchase intent, and a gap between purchase intent and actual purchase behaviour. The majority of research within the ethical consumerism field on the attitude–intention–behaviour gap has focused on the disparities and relationships between attitudes and intentions of the ethically minded. In contrast, I wanted to look primarily at the gap between ethical purchase intentions and actual buying behaviour.

But attitude–intent–behaviour models of consumer choice artificially isolate decision-making, ignoring the external effect of the environment/situation on purchase behaviour. This interaction with environmental factors, as advertisers know, is proven to influence decision-making. Cognitive approaches assume perfect and constant conditions without consideration of environmental or social settings, thus oversimplifying the complex translation of purchase intentions into actual buying behaviour. Also when looking at this model within the ethical consumerism context, scant attention has been given to the actual control the individuals have over their personal behaviour at the point of purchase and how this differs according to their own perceptions of behavioural control when they were formulating their purchase intentions (however perceptions of control rarely reflect actual control).

Finally, there’s a lack of ethical and general consumer decision-making studies that measure and observe actual buying behaviour, as opposed to stated intentions or self-reported behaviour, is a significant methodological limitation that leaves the extant research open to the influence of social desirability bias (Auger and Devinney, 2007). Social desirability bias occurs when people feel social pressure to respond with answers in research that they believe to be socially acceptable. Social desirability bias is inherent to research methods that employ self-reported behaviour, and is pronounced in studies with ethical considerations (Carrigan and Attalla, 2001; Podsakoff and Organ, 1986).

So while my lovely focus group may have had all the right intentions; was their behaviour a true reflection on this? Did they have the control to follow through with their actions? The idiom; “the path to hell is paved with good intentions” came to mind. Given we live in a world where our environment is perpetually manipulating our perception of reality, where we surrender much of our power and responsibility to act within a system of control, do we have enough motivation to be true to our intentions? Do we have enough power to act according to what we feel is right as opposed to what is convenient in a world that binds us through other finite resources; time and money? As a researcher in my career; I wondered this. As a wonderer, hearing plenty of "blah blah blah" (future intent),  I've witnessed it. Once I met a traveler in the Holy Lake town of Pushkar whom I offered a biscuit to - he politely explaining that he wouldn't eat anything that comes in plastic wrapping while in India. Now that to me is absolute control. Walking the talk.